


Starved

by THA_THUMPP



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alpha Daryl, Alpha Shane, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bottom Rick, Drinking & Talking, Good Brother Merle, Hurt Daryl, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Inspired by Les Revenants (TV) | The Returned (TV 2015), Jealous Daryl, M/M, Memory Loss, Merle is an Alpha too, Moving On, Mpreg, Murder Mystery, Omega Rick, POV Multiple, Protective Shane, RickGrimes!Mpreg, Secrets, Sibling Rivalry, Small Towns, Top Daryl, Tormented Rick, mpreg!Rick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 13:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3979609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THA_THUMPP/pseuds/THA_THUMPP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving into town to live with Rick was like a massive culture shock and a pit stop in hell all at once. From the very second Daryl stepped off his motorcycle and onto concrete, his inner Alpha felt like a stray dog that was bound for a kennel with a bunch of domestic half-breeds who didn’t know nothing of the outside world. Stoplights every hundred-feet, coffee shops on every second corner, parks manicured every other day. It was like a big fucking joke, and Daryl didn’t like the atmosphere one bit. There was no privacy. He couldn’t piss on trees. Everybody had to know about everybody, and that kind of urban mentality made him feel claustrophobic, like he didn’t belong, and he told Rick that straight-up in raw emotion.</p><p>Only, after reading the disappointment on Rick’s face – that he saw a chance for a good life here in the house they bought together – Daryl immediately took it all back and said he’d try. After all, his Omega made up ninety-nine percent of what home meant anyway and he’d do anything to keep that home happy.</p><p>Everything worked out fine after that... So why the hell does Daryl wake up in the mountains, <em>alone</em>?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. With Boots On

**Author's Note:**

> Basically this fanfiction is a withdrawal and spiked soon after trying to find something to fill that lonely, Sunday emptiness with. This story will have loads of rickyl, harbor dark secrets and tons of Daryl angst, tormented Rick, and funny as f^ck cameos of Merle... or so that's the plan. Yup, you know you like the sound of that. *wink, wink*
> 
>   
> 

Pine trees. They’re all around him, erect and towering like totem poles throughout the forest floor with their trunks of weeping wood and sticky sap that smells sweeter than freshly broken mulch at a mill. There’s something else, too. Silence. He doesn’t hear anything except his panicked breathing and the crunching of crisp leaves beneath his feet as he paces in place. Back and forth, front and back.

He’s in the mountains, above the dam. Daryl’s eyes tell him that he is as he looks around, but his brain can’t remember how he got here. Only that he just somehow woke and was.

It’s disorientating when he thinks about it, weird. He’s supposed to be at the bar. That’s where his memory puts him last. He was taking his usual lunch break and playing darts by himself in the smokiest corner of the room by the pool table before being beckoned over to the countertop, because… there was a call for him on the bar phone. Who was it? Rick? Yeah. Rick wanted him to drop by the house before returning to the shop, said he had something to tell him. What was it? Was it important? It must’ve been because Daryl’d left right then, perched his sunglasses on his face, swung one leg over his motorcycle, and then…

Nothing.

Everything from then on is hazy, dark, and abyss-like. It feels like he has a hole in his memories, like they were stolen from him, or he just plain forgot them. At forty-two, though? Nah. He’s too young to even be considering Alzheimer’s. So, what then? He get drunk and blackout? Thinking a little harder, he _does_ recall slamming back a couple shots of vodka during his stay at the bar, but something so routine couldn’t have been enough to make him lose consciousness… Could it?

Daryl’s head spins. He doesn’t know, doesn’t know how spring can feel so much like winter overnight either, but it does, and he hugs his leather jacket tighter across his chest to try and block out the cold chill in the air as he walks. Where? At first it’s just to get his bearings – gripe on and off about his motorcycle he can’t find – but as his sense of direction kicks in and his confusion becomes second rate it’s with purpose, and the Alpha in him tries to make up for any squandering by helping him weave his own path around the trunks of the mountain pines and the understory of brush like detours on an expressway in Detroit, right up until the very moment he exits the woods and sets foot on a highway he knows well.

Welcome to Harbeck. Ten miles.

With his hands already an hour-deep into the seams of his jeans, Daryl spares the state sign a passing read as he maneuvers himself to the other side of the road with a quick jog, towards traffic. There aren’t any cars driving by right now, but with the sun just sinking below the horizon-line and drowning everything above it in dusky hues of yellows, pinks, and purples, he isn’t about to risk his ass getting sideswiped by idiots who can’t remember when to turn their high beams on. There’d been a couple reported accidents like that within the last two years already, which was one of the main reasons why the town finally caved and paid for streetlights every thirty-odd feet, and while Daryl didn’t appreciate where his tax money was going then, he does now. Especially after the streetlights carry him as far as the five-mile milestone into town.

The next three miles athwart the overpass are left to the improvisation of bus stops and the headlights of passing cars and trucks, but even so Daryl doesn’t let his strides break once. He keeps to his own, holding his head low and refusing to stick a thumb out to ask for a ride even when the soles of his boots start to burn hot like the sulfured end of a match after a strike. It’s ever the comparison to the frosty numbness of his body, and Daryl can hardly feel the skin on his face by the time he finally steps off the main artery of road and into the sleeping belly of Harbeck. More specifically, in front of his place of work.

Spokes.

It isn’t exactly the catchiest name for a motorcycle shop, but Daryl likes to think that’s because he didn’t lend a hand in picking it. The place had been up and running long before his transition from the boondocks to civilization and being the only garage of its kind for miles, as well as a reminder of the greasy living he was leaving behind, it quickly became like a second home to him, someplace he didn’t mind spending seven-hours a day at and leaving from covered in oil.

Not today, though.

Right now it’s solely a stop along the way, and although Daryl’s mindful that it’s already hours past closing time, he’s simply hoping that because he’s an employee here he can get away with jacking a spare motor so he can give his feet a break for the remaining two-miles home. He’ll borrow one for the night and have it back by daybreak tomorrow. Nobody’ll have to know it ever went missing, or at least that’s what he figures, but as he strolls himself up to the drawn shutters of the shop a haunting chill touches the back of his neck at the condition of the building.

Instead of having its typical liveliness about it, there’s an undeniable aura of abandonment possessing the lot. It looks like it’s been out of business for a while, but that can’t be feasible because he was just here this morning and everything was _fine_.

There wasn’t any corrosion to the roof or stalks of dried vines juxtaposing the cement walls and wiggling their way into the cracks like worms. There was a sturdy foundation… and _maybe_ that small leak in the public fountain that could’ve breached the enforcement of drinking water regulations, but realistically that couldn’t have caused a shutdown for business because it was just fixed today. Daryl _himself_ fixed it.

He swears that he did, and out of pure bafflement at what he’s seeing, he stomps his way around back to double-check the state of the side office. He calls it an office like those he works alongside with, Axel, Randall, but really it’s only a small room closed off by a single door with a built-in window for ventilation. It’s easy to miss if nobody’s looking, but even with Daryl knowing where it is and successfully finding it, he almost doesn’t recognize it with all the graffiti covering the framework and the limescale coating the pane.

None of this was here this morning, and Daryl mouths a silent “What _…_ ” as he tries to scrub away at what he can, mostly focusing on whatever’s inhibiting him from peering through the window. Because of the dryness and thickness of the built-up lime and spray paint, it takes him a little over thirty seconds to even break the surface, but even after he has a decently-sized peephole he doesn’t feel accomplished because nothing about the side office is any different from the outside of the shop. Everything is still exactly as it looks…

Vacant.

Daryl doesn’t know how that’s possible, but he backs away from the shop without further question, turns on a heel and towards the road slowly, shoves his freezing hands into his pockets again, pushes his shoulders high to protect his ears from the biting cold, and picks up from where he last left off, all in a daze.

He conquers his second-to-last mile devoid of change, heart pounding and thoughts spinning, but during his homestretch towards home he becomes a little more focused and takes a shortcut on a side street through a community area to cut his time in half. He’s only ever walked it on one other occasion, but backtracking is in his blood and his memory serves him justice this time. Go straight for two blocks, then turn right. After that, another right. It’s simple enough, and twenty minutes later he’s more than relieved to find himself trudging across his front lawn, passing Rick’s white cop cruiser parked in the driveway, retrieving the spare key under the third rock in the garden that Rick’d had made for him because he was always forgetting his, and pushing through the front door with a soft unlock and twist.

As Daryl enters into the foyer, he’s elated to feel the house air skyrocket to eighty instead of fifty-five and his nose begin to thaw from the cold he’s finally leaving outside. He hasn’t been smelling much besides temperature for the last two hours of his trek home, if temperature had a scent, and he shivers as he finally gets around to closing the door, seconds from being sent into a hungry prowl upstairs to laze beside his mate as an apology for being late. With how all the lights in the house are dim, he figures that’s where he’d find Rick by now, but before Daryl even turns towards the stairs a real hunger gets in the way instead.

It’s an unfathomable hunger, a dark hunger, and Daryl pointedly makes the kitchen his first stop, turning on the stumpy light above the stove and reading the time as he passes it. He doesn’t know why he’s even considering eating at ten o’clock at night, but he grabs the bread off the counter and lays two slices out for a sandwich nevertheless, opens the fridge like a man who’s been starved for days in the desert, and quickly rummages for what he can find. Slices of cold turkey, roast beef, crispy bacon, baloney, three kinds of cheese, _lettuce_. Fuck. He doesn’t even like lettuce, but he smashes it on anyways after the sweet pickles and the pre-sliced cucumbers, and no more than five seconds later he’s scooping his invention up with both hands and taking a big bite of it without worry of mess or disgust.

Growing up he’s eaten far more exotic, and enjoys another mouthful with a surprised nod that the flavor ain’t half bad before he starts picking at a few loose ingredients that’ve fallen onto the counter, tossing a tomato back in his mouth here and a cucumber while still chewing there. Around his fourth bite, he tries to locate a glass so he can pour himself a drink of water from the tap, but somewhere in the process of spinning his elbow accidentally knocks into an ornament on the counter that he never remembers being there this morning, and with a loud crash it topples to the floor and into a brittle thousand-and-one tiny pieces.

A mumbled curse slips out of Daryl mouth with some of his sandwich as he cringes. Damn. He really hopes Rick ain’t gonna miss that… whatever _that_ was. It’s too late to know now, but _so much for bein’ quiet,_ he inwardly scolds as he leaves his snack on the counter and sucks at whatever crumbs are hooked to the skin of his fingers before he looks around for the broom. Next to the fridge? Nope. The pantry? Bingo.

Daryl spots it slanted among the dry food and cans in plain sight, but just as he reaches for it a weighty creak at the bottom of the stairs distracts him. He pauses and then turns his whole body towards the sound expectantly, ready to announce himself, but that’s before he sees the gun aimed his way through the dim of the archway. Whose gun? In the heat of the moment it doesn’t matter because with his senses still out of commission from the cold all Daryl can think is _red-alert, intruder_ , and after a large step forward his hand strikes out in blind impulse and daredevil fast. He disarms the service weapon in two clean motions, and as it clatters audibly to the floor and skids in a line into the farthest corner of the kitchen he makes a grab for the figure behind it next, successfully making contact and tugging whoever it is closer by the wrist.

A sharp gasp of _“Wait! Please don’t. I’m…”_ follows the yank, and soon there’s a deep flinch and pained grunt of resistance, which eventually ends with the full force of the kitchen lights blaring on at a speed quicker than sound.

Unprepared, Daryl’s vision goes milky on the spot. He stumbles, bringing the figure stumbling with him, grip loosened but not undone. Only, by then it it’s not just a figure anymore.

“Rick?” Daryl laughs uneasily and through a couple hard blinks.

 _“D… Daryl?”_ He hears Rick ask back slowly, tone doubtfully weak, hesitantly breathless, and full of undecided emotion.

“Did I wake ya?” Daryl tries to squint at his lover, but the radiance of the kitchen lights still prove to be a little overwhelming and all he sees is diffusion. “M’sorry if I did. I tried’ta be quiet, but then I hit some stupid thing, and… ‘Ey. Ya wouldn’t know what happened to the shop, would ya? I passed it by on my way home hopin’ to borrow somethin’ so I could get ‘ere quicker, but—” He feels Rick’s hand go as still as a mouse in his. “Rick?” Daryl squints again with a little more effort, finally seeing clearer shapes and finally seeing his Omega staring up at him like a stranger. Daryl stiffens. “S’wrong?”

Rick doesn’t answer, but everything about his face says that he wants to and that’s all Daryl looks at. The glazing, troubled eyes. The prompt, jagged blinking. The middle-raised, knit brows. Rick’s mouth even tries to move after a few seconds of silence, but to no reward or produced sound. His lips simply freeze on the first stage of speaking, hued as pink as the puffy skin around his eyes, which’re emphasizing the powder-blue of his irises and the thickness of his lashes, lashes now softening with tears.

Daryl wants to wipe each and every one of them away with his thumbs in that instant, to rest their foreheads together and rub his Alpha scent all over Rick to comfort him, but just as he looks down to take a step closer – to show that he’s attending to his internal emotions of guilt, that of his evening absence and then wordless intrusion – his sights immediately fall on the rounding size of his Omega’s belly, a part of Rick that’s heavily pushing against the fabric of the white shirt he’s wearing and looking like he nonsensically swallowed a globe.

“What the… hell?”

Rick brokenly follows Daryl’s eyes with his own as they hover around his stomach for too long, and there’s a split second when it seems like he’s going to pull back and away, but Daryl holds him where he is by tightening the grip on his wrist.

“How the fuck’re ya _pregnant_ , Rick!?” Daryl yells, and there’s no stopping the anger or confusion from disfiguring his face, his eyes the most minuscule of slits as he looks back up to see Rick’s jaw hesitating in a swallow, features bracing ever so slightly in the moment like it’s a wake-up call.

“Tha… _That’s_ what you wanna start with?” Rick asks weakly and then takes one of the smallest of steps forward, making a very precise motion at the ground as he speaks. “How about, how the hell are you _here_?”

“Here?” Daryl scoffs like he’s just been asked the dumbest question in the world. “This’s my home, Rick! Why wouldn’t I be _here_?!”

“Why?” It’s Rick’s turn to sound confused, throat amazingly raw even though he hasn’t really said more than fifteen words. “Because you _died_ eight months ago, Daryl…” He says, voice trembling as he fights a sob. “That’s _why_.”


	2. Kick The Calendar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're are so, SO sorry that this update has taken forever to get here. We've been busy studying for midterms on top of midterms and projects - not to mention a little time for the video games, but uh... hey, here's chapter two? (Yes, we know we need to update our other mpreg!Rick stories, we're working on them!) Please enjoy, and again - so sorry!!!

_The last memory he had of them together was the morning of eight months ago._

_Daryl was sitting on the edge of their bed, smoking one of his cigarettes and blowing out a ring of smoke into the serene space of their bedroom. He was at arm’s length, his features distant and the farthest side of his face highlighted by a strong sliver of light from the closest window pane. It was a picture-perfect moment, entrancing, and beautiful to take in. Rick could remember looking over at Daryl within a silence that could only be described as doting before stirring enough to show he was awake. All it took was a small stretch, toes pushed down beneath sheets as white as snow, and on cue Daryl was snuffing his cigarette out and twisting around to greet him._

_Their mattress dipped from the shift of weight and their lips met. Rick let Daryl come to him, lean over him, and ran a hand through Daryl’s shabby hair as praise. Moments later he let that same hand drop onto Daryl’s bare shoulder in an effort to keep Daryl from pulling away from their morning kiss too soon, and Daryl smiled against his mouth with a rumbling grunt. It was a felt sound, one that traveled deep and spoke towards amusement, and Rick smiled back with the most salient of smiles._

“I had somethang I wanted to tell you, but…”

_He never got around to it. He couldn’t, not until he knew it was true himself. Right then it was just a feeling, a flutter of butterflies, and after their kiss was finally broken and Daryl was slipping away from him and towards a pile of laundry, Rick let his hand fall to rest on his chest. Then lower, before rolling onto his side and trying to hide the joy of what the news could mean for the both of them as he watched Daryl throw on a shirt and jump up a ripped pair of jeans over crooked boxers._

_And then it was his turn._

_Daryl was pitching him a shirt like a baseball, eyes bluest of the blue and smirk the cockiest of expressions on such indefinable lips, and Rick didn’t have the heart to ask for another minute. He got up, slapped Daryl on the butt, and found himself walking Daryl out of the house half an hour later, into the blessings of the morning sun and onto the front porch. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have given to share a moment more with Daryl, but even though the precinct had given him the day off, Daryl wasn’t so lucky. He still had to go into the bike shop to fill-in for somebody, and responsibility, as they both knew, came first._

_If Rick was still in heat, however, that would have been another story, but luckily his cycle was a week in the past. Neither of them had to worry about stray Alphas prowling around their doorstep until the next few months or so, maybe longer if Rick’s feeling was right, and if it was he owed it all to Daryl’s protection and willingness to satisfy all of his greedy needs and wants whenever asked; filling him when he pined for it, curling beside him when he sought comfort._

“You were my rock.”

_He couldn’t have wished for a more loyal mate, he could remember thinking, and as Daryl moved to descend the porch steps he caught Daryl by the jacket and pulled Daryl back to him. Daryl came willingly, his lean every so graceful and their fingers ever so perfect as they laced, and after Rick led one of Daryl’s hand up to his mouth he planted a kiss on the back of it. A dreamy and long kiss, savoring it with closed eyes. Daryl hummed at the gentleness of Rick’s lips. They felt like the summer weather on his skin, pleasant and warm, and when they whispered something after a beat he squeezed Rick’s hand in his; the message understood._

“I had told you that I loved you and…”

“I’d said it back.” Daryl remembers and Rick takes an unstable breath.

“I know.” He says.

_He had said the same thing from the porch. And right afterwards he was taking a step back and letting Daryl go, watching like he always did until Daryl was hardly a speck in the distance on that motorcycle of his before heading back inside the house. Usually it was a lonely sighting, but that day Rick didn’t feel all that alone. Something told him he wasn’t, and as soon as the front door was shut tight behind him he headed straight for the bathroom to put an end to his curiosity._

_He was either positive or negative._

_The box he had bought the day before would help in clarifying that, the wishful thinking from the fact, and as he found himself waiting on a used test the suspense was unreal. Time seemed to go slower the longer he stared at the stick, waved it out, then stared at it some more, but he couldn’t muster the motivation to look anywhere else. This was an important moment, a hoped-for blessing, and when those directed two minutes were behind him, the result clear in the form a little pink plus mark, Rick nearly slumped against the sink and cried._

“I was so happy when I found out, when thinkin’ about how this was everythang I’d ever wanted to give you as your Omega. Christ. I wanted so badly to call you right then and there and tell you the news—”

“Didn’t you?” Daryl can remember the bar. “Call.” He means.

Rick nods distantly.

 _He had called_ , _but not until noon. Though even then, after using the morning to collect his thoughts and let the discovery settle in, the words weren’t right; the conversation too simple._

_‘Hey.’ It started, and so much more could have been said if not for modesty. ‘Think you could stop by the house before returnin’ to the shop? I… I wanna tell you somethang.’_

_‘Can’t ya tell me ‘ere? Now?’ He had to strain to hear Daryl’s voice competing with the noise of early drinkers in the background._

_‘No, I wanna see your face when I do,’ Rick replied, still managing a smile, and he knew Daryl could hear it in his tone. ‘So will you come?’_

_‘For you? Always,’ was the promise and what kept Rick sitting on the living room couch with his elbows squared on the tops of his knees, his ears counting the ticks from the clock on the wall as seconds turned into minutes, and his hand waving the test back and forth for the next two hours._

_The followed third._

_Then the forth._

“I waited for you…”

“Rick—”

“I sat there, makin’ up stupid excuses about why you weren’t there with me. And when the knock came…” Rick takes a sharp breath at the memory, so close to tears again.

_It had sounded so normal, so like Daryl to forget his key, that he didn’t even think twice about it being anybody other than his Alpha as he pocketed the test and moved to open the front door. He just acted, and the surprise was on him, quick like a bee, after the frame was pulled to its full width to reveal Shane on the other side. Alpha Shane. Shane on duty in his cop uniform. Shane with his brows rolled high in an expression that couldn’t quite be read. And Shane with one hand fixed on his hip, the other combing through his thick tuff of hair._

_‘Shane?’ Rick wanted to tell him the timing was bad for a visit and to come back later, but he didn’t get another word in before Shane was shaking his head._

_‘I’m sorry, brother. I am so, so sorry. There was this accident… I wanted to be the one to… Shit, man. Daryl, he’s… _’__

_‘Daryl?’ That was all Rick heard and what had him one foot outside the door. ‘What… What about Daryl?’ He asked, and then regretted it less than a second later because he was a cop too and suddenly this was a very familiar scene. ‘Is he hurt? Please tell me he’s just hurt, Shane.’ Shane wouldn’t look at him. ‘Shane?’_

_‘Rick, brother. I’m so sorry.’ Shane said again, like it was all he could want to say in a lifetime. ‘I need you to come with me. The, the hospital. They, uh…’_

“They what?” Daryl asks and watches as Rick visibly reins in the strength to go on.

“Shane said they needed me to identify the body they had in the morgue as, as next of kin, and…”

“And?”

Rick shakes his head.

_He had heard Shane out, then blanked. It was like he was there and then not, watching from his own eyes then from somewhere faraway. He could remember how his lungs were overworking towards breath that wouldn’t calm or come and how his sight was too tearful to see shapes clearly. It was an experience unto itself, hard to live through and even harder to accept. Though he didn’t cry right away. In his confusion he didn’t even know what he wanted to cry about, but time didn’t wait for him to decide. It continued on, slipping through his fingers like water regardless, and his next few moments were in blinks; the only constant being Shane._

_Shane stayed by his side from the porch of the house, to the front of the hospital. He drove the police cruiser over with only the two of them in it, uttering things like ‘I’ll get us there,’ ‘You just… _’_ He never finished with ‘don’t worry,’ but Rick heard the two words throughout every pause, every stoplight, and every bout of silence, and by the time they were parked outside of Harbeck Memorial he had so many reasons why he should be worried whirling through his mind that he didn’t know if he could set one foot outside the car. _

_But then Shane opened the passenger door._

_‘Rick?’ Shane’s voice was garbled, but soft in calling. He didn’t mean for Rick to get out right then, if more time was needed they both would wait in the parking lot, but Rick acted in response._

_He got out._

_And afterwards he was walking. His legs, even though weak with heartache, just started going on their own and with one foot in front of the other, he moved forward. It felt like he was tranced, like he was looking through the lense of a camera rolling at two-hundred frames per second as he entered the hospital and found its lobby crowded; the scene slower and the sounds more drawn. There were footsteps echoing alongside his footsteps, their cadence pounding his eardrums violently like the beats of his heart, and never before had Rick felt so detached from reality, so alone and ready to let any face he might have known elapse unnoticed – until he saw Daryl’s brother, Merle, standing at the end of the hall._

_Merle was yelling at somebody, his hands on his hips, sweating in a woman beater, and his red face aged two times older with sorrow instead of smokes. And then he was turning. Rick was being noticed and almost immediately Merle was giving off an incredible look of anger. It showed in his features, his dropped shoulders and his curling fists, and the next time Rick blinked Merle was in the middle of stomping towards him with a very straight finger pointing back the way he had come. Some prejudice words were even shouted, words like ‘filthy Omega’ and ‘Darlene’s whore,’ and Rick saw the shove before it even happened._

_But he didn’t steer from it. He let it play out and as it did, as Merle’s hands landed his chest, the cold, harshness of reality came with them._

_‘Daryl,’ Rick croaked as time returned to its normal speed, and judging from the pale look that overtook Merle’s face at the mention of his little brother everything Shane had said in the car ride over was true. Daryl was… ‘Let me see him.’ Rick needed to see him. ‘Let me through!’_

_Except Merle didn’t budge._

_‘Ah, no. I told ‘em cops you didn’t need’ta come down ‘ere.’ Merle was telling him, all the while throwing the occasional glare at Shane, who had stopped at the mouth of the hall to give Rick room. ‘This’s between blood, not some piece’a Omega trash that can take dick but not a fuckin’ hint! You were never good fer Darlene, I warned ‘im. Saw a day comin’ like this the day he left with’chu, and now—’_

_‘Hey! Best watch your ugly mug, Dixon!’ Shane shouted from the end of the hall._

_‘Or what?’ Merle shouted back, one of his hands still mean and grudge-deep on Rick’s chest. ‘What can ANY of you do what’s already been done? HUH? He’s gone. The only family I had left, GONE!’_

_‘Please. I, I need to…’ Rick’s ears were ringing. He wouldn’t ask again, and when Merle didn’t heed, Rick shoved. ‘Move!’_

_He forced the Alpha back, to unhand him, but no sooner than Merle was caught off guard was Merle coming back twice as hard. Like a raged bull Merle charged, shoving again with both palms out like horns and with the bursting strength of two-hundred pounds of weight, and the force was enough to send Rick stumbling backwards with a rough grunt. He didn’t fall, but the test he had stuffed away in his back pocket did. Though with tensions so high nobody heard it clatter to the tiles._

_‘Jesus, Dixon.’ Shane was approaching now, walking up behind Rick as if to defend. ‘Just let him by. He needs to… He’s grievin’, too.’_

_‘Nah-ah. Won’t let ‘im!’ Merle yelled through Rick, his voice wet and cracking in his throat. He almost looked like he was going to get physical again as he pointed that same, straight, condescending finger back at Rick, but he never made the effort. It was more like a silent warning, a dare for Rick to try another move like before and see what it got him. ‘You jus’ keep holdin’ on’ta him the way you saw him last. And don’t say I never done nothin’ fer ya!’_

_He and Rick shared a very fierce look, eye contact hard and filled with a regret neither would agree was similar, and then Rick was taking a step back; hands indecisive about where to rest, nod indistinct._

“I almost left.” Rick’s voice wavers. “I almost turned around right there and told Shane I couldn’t be there, that comin’ down to the hospital had been a mistake. Too fast, too soon…”

_But then Merle found the test. He wasn’t looking for it. His eyes just happened to drop to the floor around his feet, around where the stick had fallen earlier, where he eventually retrieved it in a scoop. And once he it was in his big hands, the realization about what he was holding clear on his face, he looked absolutely sick to his stomach._

_‘Holy shit, man,’ Merle’s voice was two times higher in surprised disgust as he read the result not once, but twice. ‘You’re fuckin’ pregnant?!’ He said, and the phrase was triggering._

_Shane perked and Rick let out a sob, one he had been holding back since leaving the house. He couldn’t keep it together anymore, he just couldn’t, and the reminder of the test and its result had him hunched on his feet. All the good news, all the hope and the future he and Daryl could have shared, was gone. Gone like Da… Both of Rick’s hands went to his knees. He tried to keep himself upright but still, even with the support there, he was unsteady and had to lean his back against the wall to stop himself from falling over. He was so fucking devastated, so broken, so scared. Everything he was too confused to think about earlier manifested in that moment and it had his heart torn in half; his legs unable to withstand any further weight._

_Rick visibly crumbled, sliding down the wall and into a sit. Daryl was going to miss all of it. Whatever life they created together would never have a father to look up to. Rick, he was doomed to go through parenthood alone. The list went on and on, and such realizations had Rick unresponsive for a good half hour; unmoving and just staring at the wall across from him in a state of loss._

_A verified doctor was the only soul who could get him to respond after that. With Merle put in his place by Shane, the question ‘Are you here for Daryl Dixon?’ was all Rick was really waiting on, and after it was asked he was up, being led down to the morgue, then shown a sight he had dreaded all along._

_One he would never forget.  
_

“I saw your body, Daryl. Your neck, it was…” Rick shifts on the kitchen chair, where he’s been sitting ever since revealing the truth to Daryl. His voice is so tired he doesn’t know if he can say anymore about the past, but once he starts feeling his Alpha’s eyes on him from across the room – eyes colored so blue and innocent, begging for what was left hanging in the air to be finished – eventually he tries. He’s come too far not to. “You were dead… and, and now you’re _here_. And, I’m havin’ a hard time wrappin’ my head around how that’s possible.”

“Me too.” Daryl admits from where he’s leaning against the stove, and his heart sinks a little within his chest as Rick’s hum gives way to a silence so heavy it has the distance between them seeming so much more than it is.

It’s like they’re strangers. In some respects they are, but Daryl doesn’t want to think like that. He wants Rick to continue talking to him, if only a few more words. Rick’s his home, _his_ and _only his_ , and that big belly of Rick’s proves it. Daryl couldn’t be more proud, but he needs to hear the words out loud, said to him, told.

“So…” Daryl waits for Rick to look at him, picking his cuticles raw in the meantime. “It’s mine?” He asks, and his voice is so soft that Rick has to follow Daryl’s nod. “The kit?”

“Yeah.” Rick drawls his vowels after a beat of thinking, almost giving into a sad smile as he looks down at his stomach. “The… _They_ are yours.”

Daryl perks a little, his lips aching to do the same. “They?” He wants to know if he’s heard right. Except the sound of the front door being opened steals both of their attention, leaving the confirmation unvoiced.

 _“Hey, Officer Friendly! You up?”_ A voice enters from the foyer and Daryl recognizes it on the spot. “ _Seen yer lights on… Eveythin’ al’right in here?”_

“Merle?” Daryl’s ears burn hot, his shoulders going tense with building anger and overprotection as he steps away from the stove. “The fuck’s he doin’ here?” He asks the kitchen, then Rick, but in the moment Rick looks at a loss for words.

 _“Rick?”_ Merle’s voice pipes up again, though a little more serious and this time from the hall. _“Somebody in there with’chu?”_ He wonders loudly, and Daryl’s so overcome by sibling rivalry, the shitty terms he and his brother were on before and after moving into town, Rick’s story, and his Alpha bloodline that he’s already halfway across the kitchen before Merle’s face rounds into it; Merle’s drunken face.

“Wait, I can explain—” Rick is saying from the chair, in the midst of his rise from it. He seems to be the only one considering, like _really_ considering, what Merle’s reaction is going to be, but his voice reaches both Dixons too late.

“You sleazy sonuvabitch!” Daryl growls in the middle of throwing a punch, and visibly Merle’s complexion goes as white as the tiles on the floor.

“Sweet Aunt Jemima’s ghost!” Merle shrieks like a little girl at the sight of Daryl. His baby brother. Dead, baby brother. Dead baby brother back from the dead. And out of reflex, Merle always was the stronger of the two, he sends Daryl’s fist flying back into Daryl’s own nose.

There’s a loud crack, and although Daryl understands what Rick’s just told him; that he’s dead; basically a zombie; that doesn’t mean the pain doesn’t hurt.

Because it does… Like hell, it does.


End file.
